Transmeta is probably the only approach that could really make VLIW work in a general purpose system, I think. Dynamic processors get a good chunk of their spee

Transmeta is probably the only approach that could really make VLIW work in a general purpose system, I think. Dynamic processors get a good chunk of their speed from being able to (aside from schedule, maybe not as well as a compiler, in the good times, but from being able to re-schedule in adverse conditions) - if you have the power of software to be able to do that speculation then I think it could work. Hard to know with Transmeta because they had to implement X86 which is a legal minefield - FWIW I've read a lot of Transmeta engineers saying that they were completely sold on the idea but just couldn't make it stick in time - I'm too young to have been around when it was being produced so I don't know.